


Where's Our Girlfriend?

by Ankaret



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What might have happened, if Elena met Damon first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where's Our Girlfriend?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redbrunja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/gifts).



"Where's our girlfriend?" Damon says, as he strolls down the stairs buttoning his shirt up.

"Don't call her _our girlfriend_ ," Stefan says, for what feels like the hundred and ninety-ninth time.

Damon rests a hand on the wooden baluster and looks innocent. "Why not?"

"Because she's not our girlfriend," says Stefan through gritted teeth. "She's _your_ girlfriend."

"She could be our girlfriend." Damon widens his eyes and lowers his brows, making like he's about to compel somebody. "Would you like that? Would it stop you moping about the house like a little black cloud in a hoodie?" He leans down and mimes a sprinkling of rain over his brother's head.

Stefan grabs his brother by the wrist. "Stop it."

"Make me."

There is a flurry of violent motion that ends with both of them on the other side of the wood-panelled room, dusting themselves down and glaring at each other across a small expanse of Persian rug.

"You broke the bookcase," complains Damon. "I liked that bookcase."

"Damn the bookcase."

Damon raises his eyebrows. "You wouldn't have used language like _that_ in 1864."

"You're the one who's still hung up on what happened in 1864, not me," says Stefan tensely. "You're only with Elena because she looks like Katherine."

"Am I?" says Damon, pouring a glass of bourbon. "Because you're the one who only knows what she looks like. I'm the one who knows how she thinks, and what she laughs at, and how her hair smells first thing in the morning." He finishes off the drink and licks his lips, looking straight at Stefan like a challenge. "I'm the one who knows how she _tastes_."

Stefan gets in his brother's space, all shoulders and sincerity. "I'm the one who rescued her when her parents' car went over the bridge."

"But she doesn't know that. And even if she did, what would it get you? A pity hug? Good luck with that." Damon retrieves his jacket from the back of the couch and slings it over his shoulder. "I'm going out. If Elena comes back... why don't you act like you can barely bring yourself to choke out two words in her direction, and then lurk in a corner and stare at her like a wounded squirrel? That's what you were going to do anyway, right?"

"It's not safe for her to be around you. One of these days you're going to lose control."

"But you won't be the one who makes me do it." Damon pauses on the threshold. "Not this time, little brother. Not ever again."

He turns and does the flashy trick with the mist, and is gone.

Stefan wonders where he's getting the blood, the strength, to do the mist trick with. But he thinks he already knows.

\--

Stefan sits at one of the outside tables at the Grill, and broods. He knows he's brooding, he's irritated with himself for brooding, but he can't seem to stop it.

If he'd come back to Mystic Falls a week earlier, it might all have been different. If he hadn't got that call from Lexi. If he hadn't driven all night across country, running every red light between here and Abilene, when he got the text message from her saying her boyfriend Lee had gone missing. If there hadn't been that desperate race against time that ended with Lexi cradling Lee's headless body on her lap.

But it's no use blaming Lexi. He'd blame himself, worse, if he'd left her to deal with Lee's death on her own. She's his best friend.

And right now she's the only person keeping him sane. He has a bit of trouble buying her new persona as Mystic High's new history teacher, but at least it's giving her a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other while she grieves. And she doesn't expect him to do homework, either, which helps.

Stefan knows how she must be feeling. Not like her heart's been torn out. He's been up close and personal with people whose hearts have been torn out, and it's too merciful and too quick.

"Whatcha doing?" says a voice over his shoulder. "Drawing?"

Stefan puts a protective elbow over his diary so that nobody can read it, and looks up. He sees a stringy-haired boy wearing this century's uniform of generalised gloom: black jeans, a nondescript tee, a dark hoodie. Stefan has a brief and appalled moment of _do I look like that?_ and wonders whether he should try bringing the ascot and the cutaway coat back into fashion.

And then he recognises the boy. It's Elena's brother Jeremy Gilbert. He's looking hopeful and friendly with an undertone of surly, like a puppy expecting to be kicked.

"I can't draw," Stefan admits. "I was writing. You draw?"

"Uh. I used to." Jeremy looks across the road at a group of kids passing a bottle about and laughing. One of them, a girl with long coltish legs and a smile that could light up the world, draws his eyes like a flame. Stefan knows how that feels.

Stefan thinks about making friends with Jeremy. Getting himself invited into the Gilbert house, so that if Damon... He doesn't let himself think about what Damon might do to Elena. He can't let himself think about it. It's self-preservation, really.

But the kid strikes him as a cookie-cutter self-destructive little prick of the kind that you could find hunched up and glowering on any staircase around Mystic High, and that isn't what Stefan generally looks for in a friend. And besides, even a substance-abusing suburban fuck-up like Jeremy Gilbert doesn't deserve to be used just to get an invitation. That's what Damon would do, but Stefan's better than that, these days. The kid needs an actual friend, not a vampire with an agenda. The best thing Stefan could do would be to walk away.

Except that he'd been a kid like this, once. Angrier and less unkempt, and with a blood dependency problem to deal with, but basically the same. And Lexi hadn't walked away.

"You play pool?" he says, tucking the diary into his pocket.

Jeremy looks confused and briefly suspicious, like he knew how to try to make friends with people but had no damn clue what to do if they acted friendly back. "Sure, I play pool," he says, and they go into the Mystic Grill together, into the warmth and the light.

A girl accosts them as they go into the Grill. Jeremy makes himself scarce, like a kid getting out of the way when his parents' friends call. The girl gives him an exasperated look. She's tall and blonde, one of Elena's friends. Stefan's brain riffles through a series of images – this girl pinning up a list on a noticeboard, this girl talking earnestly to a freshman who hadn't made it onto the cheerleading squad, this girl arranging her scarf just so around her throat and a brave smile on her face before she turns to face the school day – before it gives him a name. Caroline Forbes. The sheriff's daughter. Right.

"Caroline," he says. "Can I help you?"

"Yes!" She gives a bright, social smile. "Stefan Salvatore, right? I need volunteers for the foreign exchange student mentoring programme."

He can already see her in a couple of years time, where he'll never be: off to college with a glowingly full list of extracurriculars and a 4.0 GPA. If she ever gets the chance to turn that neurotic dynamism to something more important than organising Mystic Falls' social life, the world will not be safe. "I'm new in town," he says gently. "I often feel like I'm an exchange student here myself."

"All the more reason to volunteer, get to know people," she says perkily. "No? I can't change your mind?"

Her face falls as she sees he can't, and he can see a glimpse of the frantic clockwork that keeps her running at her type-A best for fear that if she stops for a moment, people will stop seeing her at all.

He really wants to volunteer for the stupid programme, just to make her stop looking at him that way. It's not right to let a lady down like that. He wonders about asking her to join him for a drink. She's bright, she knows her own mind, she's better company than Jeremy Gilbert, not that that's difficult.

But she's not Elena. And it isn't fair to expect her to be second best.

He recognises his fate standing by the pool table, and smiles at Caroline Forbes and turns away.

It's better for everybody this way. Really.

\--

"My little brother's making friends with your little brother," says Damon, lifting a strand of Elena's hair off the pillow and looking at it in the low morning light that glances through the window. "We should arrange them a play date."

Elena lies on her back and looks at the ceiling, her body full of the satiated heat of the aftermath of sex. "Jeremy needs all the friends he can get," she says, and frowns.

He loves her frown, the mystery of how the muscles of a face that's so similar to Katherine's can produce something so utterly different. He wants to trace it with his fingers, smooth it out with kisses, make her lose control of her muscles altogether with his lips and his fingertips and his tongue.

"Stefan doesn't like me, does he?" she says.

"No," Damon says smoothly. "I wouldn't call Stefan's feelings for you _liking_ at all."

She props herself up on her elbow and looks at him, seriously, like she's learning him by heart. She cups her hand against his cheek. "Because you're his brother and he thinks I'm taking you away?"

Annoyance prickles and propagates across Damon's skin, and he gets even more annoyed as he contemplates it. He doesn't like feeling annoyed, and he particularly doesn't like feeling annoyed in bed. He ought to be jubilant that she's misread Stefan so badly. He ought to be triumphant that this time, he's got something that's his, all his.

But he doesn't. He feels out of balance. And the more he thinks about it, the more out of balance he feels.

 _It's no fun winning too easily_ , he tells himself. But that's not wholly right either.

He thinks about turning his emotions off, but that would be a hell of a waste with Elena on the deliciously scrunched sheets beside him. He tips her underneath him, with the small heat of her breasts pushing scratchy lace against his chest, and the heat between her thighs that's already waking, waiting for him. He lets his fingers trail up her sides so that she shivers, and captures both her wrists above her head.

"We're not that close," he says. "Don't worry about Stefan. In fact, I'm going to make sure you don't think about Stefan at all."

Elena's wrists feel deliciously fragile in his hands, but he knows she's not fragile at all. She's strong, and that's another puzzle. She's stronger than Katherine. Katherine had long, deep fissures in her armour-plating. She made sure she kept the Salvatore brothers away from them, but that didn't stop Damon knowing they existed. Elena is pure strength all through.

Damon kisses her in the hot vulnerable curve between her throat and her shoulder, and it takes him all _his_ strength just to kiss and not bite. She tips her head back and he nips his way up her jawline, while his hand slides down her arm into the firm delicious heat of her side and the vulnerable curve of her breast.

But something still feels out of balance, and however much he tries to choke the feelings in flesh, they don't go away.

\--

Stefan sits in one of the booths at the back of the Mystic Grill, and waits. He's tense. The room is full of colour and movement, and it's _too much_ , when his nerves are on edge like this. The light from the Tiffany lamps is too hard-edged. The waitress's voice grates like a scream on his senses. Mayor Lockwood, leaning over too assiduously to help a woman who isn't his wife into a chair, looks like a wolf-faced gargoyle. Stefan makes a fist and digs his nails into his own palm, because the pain makes it easier to manage.

A shadow falls across the table. It's someone he hasn't seen in a hundred and forty-six years.

The last time he saw her she was wearing a starched Victorian pinafore and a hoopskirt that ended at a childish ankle-height, at a time when grown women's dresses swept the ground. This time, she's wearing yet another iteration of the 2010s floppy black hoodie – and Stefan can't believe how tired he is of seeing those about the place - a surfer necklace, and a scowl.

"Anna Belle," he says, and stands up, because he's a gentleman.

"Just Anna, these days," she says. She looks both ways before she sits down, hands in her pockets, wary. He guesses it's been a rough hundred and forty-six years for her. She doesn't take the seat opposite him; she slides into the booth next to him, where she can keep an eye on all the exits. "So. You think we can help each other?"

There's no going back now. Stefan nods. "When the others get here..."

"Whoa." Anna stands half up out of her seat, and it's only the arrival of Vicki the waitress with a businesslike enquiry as to whether they're all OK there and want some water or a menu that makes her sit down again. The waitress is all plastic-coated friendliness, but she doesn't look either of them in the eye. As soon as she bustles off, Anna turns her glare on Stefan. "You didn't say anything about _others_."

"Oh, like you're not keeping any secrets from me. Like the barman, or that other newborn you've got stashed away in a motel room on the edge of town," says Stefan briskly. "We _need_ Lexi. She's older than either of us. There's twenty-six other vampires in that tomb besides your mother, and they're all going to be hungry. And we need her friend Bree, because we can't get the tomb open without a witch."

Anna tucks her hands into her pockets and shivers. Stefan can see she's thinking about her mother, and he feels ashamed of himself. "I'm sorry," he says, leaning in close to her. "We'll get Pearl out. I promise."

But when Anna looks at him, her face is hard as tomb nails. "You found us a witch," she says, like he's scored a point on some secret scoreboard somewhere, and then she goes on the attack. "I know why _I_ want the tomb open. I don't know why Lexi wants the tomb open, but I dare say she's got her reasons."

"She owes a favour to a vampire called Harper. Something to do with the Battle of Fort Wagner, I never got the full story."

"Harper, huh? I never knew him. He must have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time." Anna takes a sip of the ice water and looks at Stefan, and her eyes are like bone needles.

She'd always been in Pearl's shadow, when he knew her before, and _everyone_ looked dumb and weak and kind of sloppy compared to Pearl; he'd never realised how smart Anna was, or how dangerous. "What I don't know is why _you_ want the tomb opened. I'd think you'd be happy to see Katherine Pierce sealed away forever," she says.

"I loved Katherine," he says, and it's the truth.

"At the beginning, maybe."

"It's... complicated."

Anna lays both hands on the table. She's wearing fingerless gloves, and her nails are bitten down to the quick. "I can do complicated."

"You've seen Elena, right?" Stefan says finally.

Anna raises both eyebrows. " _Oh_ , yeah. You want to tell me what is going on there? Because that resemblance is _spooky_."

"I thought you liked spooky things."

"Don't change the subject."

Stefan sighs. "I don't _know_ what's going on there. And I'm damn certain Damon doesn't, either, and what neither of us know might kill Elena."

Anna rolls her eyes. "I see where you're going."

 _I wish I didn't_ , Stefan thinks. "There's only one person who might know for sure, and that's Katherine."

Anna regards him levelly. "You are one fucked-up bunny."

Stefan is trying to think how to reply to that when he sees Lexi and Bree come through the door, laughing together, unbuttoning coats and unwinding scarves. And then from the _other_ direction comes very nearly the last person he wants bursting in on a scene like this. Elena would be the last person. But her brother runs her close.

"Hey, Stefan. Hey... uh, you're in my math class, right?" Jeremy says with an unusual degree of bonhomie. The cheerful look and the smell on Jeremy's breath tell Stefan all he needs to know: Vicki the waitress has been slipping him drink, and possibly something more, in the room at the back. "You on a date with this guy? Man, the stories I could tell."

"Who's your cute friend, Stefan?" says Anna, with an edge to her voice that Stefan takes to mean both _yes, I actually do find him cute_ and _get rid of him right now_.

"Jeremy Gilbert. Jeremy, Anna. Uh, actually, Jeremy, we're a little busy."

"But not on a date," Anna puts in hastily.

Jeremy gets that familiar kicked-puppy look on his face as he slouches off. Anna props her chin on her hand and watches him go with a thoughtful look in her eyes that turns a whole lot less thoughtful as he intercepts Vicki and starts hassling her; for drugs or for sex, Stefan doesn't know.

Lexi gives Stefan a questioning look from across the room. Stefan beckons her over. Bree is flirting with the barman. The barman looks like he doesn't know what hit him but he's really looking forward to finding out.

"I said it before, and I'll say it again," mutters Anna. "Fucked-up bunny."

\--

Elena makes straight for Stefan across the school yard, her face closed up into such a perfect replica of Katherine's thundercloud expression that his heart folds itself like wings inside his chest. He puts his book bag on one of the tables and fiddles with the contents, waiting for her to pass him by and unload her righteous indignation onto her friend Caroline or her friend Bonnie. Whatever Stefan is, he isn't her friend.

But she carries on marching straight up to him. She stares at him, chin thrust out, looking so like Katherine that his guts hurt.

"I know you don't like me," she says. "But I need your help."

"I don't..." Stefan manages to tie his own wrist up in the strap of his bag. "I don't... not like you."

"I'm not here to make you like me," she says impatiently. "I'm grateful to you whatever. Jeremy needed a friend and you were there. Particularly after Vicki..." She makes a small dismissive gesture with one hand. "I don't even know _what_ happened with Vicki."

Stefan knows what happened with Vicki. He'll always wonder whether Anna had her eye on Pearl's first victim all along: whether it was something to do with a casual nasty remark from a senior with a disastrous lack of self-esteem to a geeky, quiet little sophomore, or something to do with the way Anna's eyes had followed Jeremy Gilbert at the Mystic Grill that night they'd made their plans, or some grudge against a Donovan who did her wrong some time in the last two hundred years. "You and Vicki were friends?" he says.

"Never mind Vicki. She'll come home when she's good and ready. I wish she knew what it does to Matt when she runs off like this, but I guess she just doesn't care." Elena shakes her head impatiently, as if trying to clear it of irrelevances. "I need you to help me with Damon. He's taking the news about Katherine really badly, and you were the one who told him, so you need to take some responsibility and help me get him back on his feet."

Stefan thinks about the things Damon has a tendency to do when taking things badly. He's astonished that Elena still has an unsnapped neck. He feels a rush of anger at the thought. If his heart still beat, it would be beating faster. He has to remind himself that his brother _hasn't_ hurt her. At least, not anywhere it shows on the outside of her skin.

"Anything," he says, looking into her dark eyes, and means it.

Elena looks surprised, as if she'd expected more of a fight. "You'll come back to the lodging house? You haven't been round there a lot lately. "

"Damon said he never wanted to see me again."

"Damon says he never wants to see people again when they mess up his breakfast order. It doesn't mean he means it."

"You know what he does when he means it," Stefan says, because he can't help himself.

"I can take care of myself. I don't need some sanctimonious guy I barely know telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing," Elena flashes back at him. He wishes to hell that he could tell her how much he wants to take care of her. But he can't. "You're his _brother_ ," she says. "If he didn't care about you, you wouldn't be able to hurt him. And you've hurt him."

She turns sharply on her heel and makes for her car. Stefan follows her, like a puppet on a string. "You know he's acting out like this because of Katherine," he says.

"Yes, I know he's acting out like this because of Katherine. He told me that after I dragged him feet first out of the vervain cellar when he barricaded himself in there. I could have used having you or your uncle or somebody there to help me with that."

"And you don't care? That it's all because of another woman?"

"It's all because of the _past_." Elena leans on the top of the car and looks at him, and he can't help looking back at her, drinking her in. Even though she's his brother's girl. Even though it's wrong. Even though he's always been the good brother... well, most of the time. None of it matters. She's like a current in a river, drawing him into her until his eyes are full of water and his muscles can't move. "Now, you can stay mired in the past with Katherine and... all that stuff, or you can help me."

"Yes, ma'am," he murmurs, and gets into the car.

\--

When they get back to the lodging house, Damon is past the ornery stage and into self-pitying. He looks up under his lashes and lifts a broken bourbon glass to them. The shards are still embedded in his palm. Elena stifles a little gasp. "Oh, Elena. You brought me a present. A lovely little brother. I don't want it. Next year, get me socks."

"There won't be a next year if you carry on acting like this." Stefan is across the room in a flash, peeling Damon's fingers off the glass and sniffing the remains of the bourbon. Two empty blood bags lie on the couch. At least there aren't any bodies lying around this time.

There is a white sediment in the bottom of the glass. Stefan makes a face. "What have you been putting into yourself? Horse tranquillisers?"

Damon turns his head against his arm like a tired child. "Go away, Stefan."

"I'm not going away until you tell me what you've done."

The air blurs. Stefan finds himself pinned against the panelling, with Damon's fingers digging into his shoulders like knives and his brother glaring into his face. He doesn't look sane. But then, Damon hasn't been sane for a long time: it's just that some days he hides it better than others.

"Why didn't she come back for us?" Damon snarls. "Why didn't she come back for me?"

"I don't know," Stefan says, looking at him steadily. "Would you want her to? I mean... now?" He looks over at Elena, but Damon seems to have temporarily forgotten she exists, and he can't imagine how that must hurt.

"You... don't have the right to know what I want." Damon lets his brother drop back against the wall, like a doll he's bored with playing with. His gaze weaves to and fro across the room. "What the hell were _you_ doing, trying to let her out? You couldn't have what I've got, and you wanted second best?"

" _Stop_ it," Elena interrupts. "Stefan. Help me get him upstairs to bed."

"I like the sound of that," Damon says helpfully, and does what would be a pretty good example of his flirty-eye thing, except that his eyes won't focus and when he squinches up one eye and one side of his mouth to wink, they kind of _stay_ squinched.

It takes both of them to manhandle him upstairs, and ladle him into the big soft bed. He curls up on his side with his eyes closed and a puzzled expression on his face, like a child who's been scolded and doesn't know why. Stefan can't tell if he's bluffing or whether he really is that wasted. If he really did try to barricade himself in the vervain cellar, things are not right in the Republic of Damon. But then, when were they ever?

Elena leans back against Stefan, surprising him with her warmth and the shape of her shoulders pressing against his chest. "Oof."

Stefan puts his hands on her shoulders and stands there, very still, as if she's a wild animal come to his hand. She smells like vanilla and heartbreak. He waits. He doesn't want to leave Elena here alone, but it's her decision.

It's always been her decision. And she made her decision and she didn't choose him.

Part of him thinks that if he'd tried harder, if he'd told her what Damon was really like, if he'd even tried _talking_ to her, if she knew...

She knows. She loves his brother anyway. She knows about Katherine, and she's still here. And the three of them are all in this together now.

Elena pulls away from him and sits down on the bed, and pats it. "Come on. _Talk_ to me. I know I look like Katherine, but there's nothing I can do about that, and we can't stay strangers forever."

Damon rolls over and groans, and flops a hand out as he lands on his back. Elena picks up the hand without looking and holds it in her lap.

Stefan hesitates, but he can feel her eyes on him, pulling him like the tides. He crosses the room to the bed.

\--

Damon breezes downstairs the next day like nothing's happened, towelling his newly-washed hair and whistling.

" _Good_ morning, Stefan," he says, grinning like a demon who's just got everything he ever wanted with a big swirl of cream and a cherry on top. "Where's our girlfriend?"


End file.
